First off, I want to express my appreciation to the community and, particularly, the individuals who are close to the project, who have sacrificed their regular jobs to give their free time to it. I am also grateful for their patience while we finalized the launch of the ether sale. We had suggested it would take two weeks, but the legal and technical complexities of creating and managing a secure, cold wallet-based selling platform meant it took much longer. Still, we are delighted to announce the launch.
This is what we have been working on for the past six months:
- Creating Ethereum, which now has four complete implementations. We initially planned for three, but an independent developer, Roman Mandeleil, created a working Java client. PoC5 is now available.
- Developing the Ethereum programming languages and compilers, to the point where we have stable versions of Serpent, LLL, and Mutan.
- Upgrading the Ethereum protocol. Changes between February and June include:
- The transaction-pay-by-computer system, which allows a transaction to specify how much “gas” it is allowed to consume and a fee must be paid upfront.
- The concept of a virtual machine which allows contracts to call other contracts as functions, and receive return values as a response. This enables greater generalization and code reuse on the blockchain, reducing overhead.
- Reducing the block time from 60 to 10-20 seconds. PoC6 will also be updated.
- Introducing the concept of “microchains”, where the top-level block header of a lightweight node will contain only PoW information. This reduces storage and bandwidth requirements by 4 times (though faster block times will still increase these requirements by 4x). PoC6 will also be updated.
- Placing transactions into a Merkle tree, enabling the creation of lightweight client protocols to verify individual transaction executions.
- Using memory as a byte array, making it easy to port existing compilers to compile Ethereum scripts.
- Interim developments in the mining algorithm, mainly due to the work of Vlad Zamfir. More details will follow shortly.
- Creating a variety of test options to verify compatibility between clients.
- Establishing our legal organization in Switzerland.
- Undergoing due diligence procedures in the United States.
You can purchase Ether directly from our website https://ethereum.org. There are also several documents that provide additional information about the sale, including a roadmap (PLAN DEV), Intended Use of Revenue Document, Terms and Conditions of the Ethereum Genesis Sale, the Ether Product Purchase Agreement, an updated White Paper, and Yellow Paper. Please note, in particular, the following:
- Ether is not transferable or usable until the release of the genesis block. This means you must purchase Ether before downloading your wallet.
- The initial price of Ether is set at a reduced rate of 2000 ETH per BTC, and will remain that way for 14 days. The rate will then decrease linearly until it reaches a final rate of 1337 ETH per BTC, lasting for a total of 42 days, ending at 23:59 Zug Time on September 2.
- The expected release time for the Genesis block is winter 2014-2015. Due to funding delays, the date has been constantly pushed back, but development should be moving faster.
- Ether is a product, not a promise of security or investment. The token is used to pay transaction fees and build or purchase decentralized application services on the Ethereum Platform; you cannot vote on any matter, and it is not guaranteed to have future value.
- We are not blocking anything from the United States. Hurrah.
- Alternative versions of Ethereum (“alt-etherea” or “forks”) will most likely be released as separate blockchains, and these chains will compete with the official Ethereum for value. Buying ETH at the Genesis Sale is the only way to guarantee